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Roderick M. Chisholm claims that if human are not free then human are not morally responsible. This idea derives from his teaching of free will and obligation, free will and responsibility. A people subscribing to a moral code according to which a particular action is obligatory if and only if there is a moral principle which says that actions of a certain kind are obligatory and that the particular action under consideration is of that kind.
Chisholm argument is based on the idea that a person cannot be free because of social and political issues affected life of a citizen. Chisholm states that the moral code does not and need not contain the principle that every obligatory action is free, neither as a logically necessary principle. It will be recalled that a person is free to perform an action if and only if that person performs the action if he chooses to perform it, does not perform the action if he chooses not to perform it, can choose to perform it, and can choose not to perform it. Consequently, in saying that a person ought to perform an action only if that person is free to perform it, we must keep in mind this four-conjunct analysis of “free” (whose conjuncts appear in an order which differs from that in which they have appeared earlier). A person is morally responsible for an action if and only if he is free to perform it (Chisholm 236).
Taking into account Chisholm view, it is possible to say that if philosophers therefore say that a person is morally responsible for performing an action if and only if that person can perform the action and can refrain from performing it, people may ask how this affects the principle that if a person ought to perform an action, then that person is morally responsible for it. Obviously, if a person ought to perform an action, then that person can perform the action and can refrain from performing it. In contrast to Chisholm, Taylor supposes that ethical theories should not interfere with metaphysical theories. “The bodily-part view does not have this difficulty. According to it there is exactly one collection of bodily particles which can do duty for me. If one wants a materialistic view of the self, then, it would seem, one should accept the bodily-part theory” (Chisholm 53). It will follow that a person will not have an obligation to perform the action if he cannot perform the action or if he cannot refrain from performing it. By saying that the agent’s obligation can be removed in either one of two ways, philosophers imply that man in the room does not have an obligation to stay because he does not have the power not to stay and therefore does not have the liberty to stay. The man does not have the liberty to stay when it is true that he will stay if he chooses, but so saying is a consequence of our desire to avoid other paradoxical ways of speaking. This goes against the idea that if he ought to stay, it is not true that he (physically) must stay-the idea that he has no duty to do what he cannot avoid doing (Perry et al 457).
When people have made a choice, it is possible that they should have chosen differently in the sense that no man could know for certain that people should not so choose. This implies that almost all of choices are possible, and therefore that it will rarely be the case that a choice is not obligatory on the score of being one that is impossible. This can be seen as a departure from the way in which people ordinarily speak and think since they do say and think that many choices are impossible and therefore not obligatory. People are morally responsible if they have a chance to choose their actions. Only a philosopher who thinks he can show that it is morally wrong for anyone to regard fear as an appropriate would seem to be in a position to criticize those who regard it as appropriate. Taylor’s argument allows for the existence of impossible choices, and shows that certain actions are not obligatory (Perry et al 459).
The part of the argument concerning moral responsibility is important one because any comparison of conjunctions should be made by consulting experiences and moral feelings, which are emotional experiences, and not by consulting sensory experiences alone. One who believes that ethics may be reduced to a science because he thinks that “ought”-statements are analyzable into statements of the natural science of psychology, might say that an argument from a moral principle and a singular statement of fact to a moral conclusion should be tested by appealing to experience (Earle 68). Every choice is possible or free, it is wrong to relieve a person from the obligation to keep a promise by saying that the person cannot choose to keep his promise and therefore is not free to keep it. They might really think that a man who failed to perform an action that he prayed to do would be excused from an obligation to perform it.
In sum, Chisholm is right stating that if humans are not free then they are not morally responsible. Thus this statement can be opposed by materialistic and metaphysical philosophers who state that ethical theories like this should be separated from metaphysical sciences. If a person ought to perform an action, then that person can perform it and can refrain from performing it despite of freedom of choice. The selection that takes place when we decide finds a counterpart in decision that “choose” and “choose not” should be used as the core actions in the previous circumstances of the two statements in the definition of free action.
Works Cited
Chisholm, R. M. The Philosophy of Roderick M. Chisholm. Lewis Edwin (ed). Open Court, 1997.
Earle, J. W. Introduction To Philosophy. McGraw-Hill; 1 edition, 1991.
Perry, J., Bratman, M., Fischer, J. M. Introduction to philosophy: Classical and Contemporary Readings. Oxford University Press, USA; 3 edition, 1998.
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